12:44 AM,
Nov. 11, 2012

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Written by

Lou Buttino
Guest essay

It hurts to have a good friend die. But when that good friend was also a hero to you, it gets even harder. Carmen Basilio was from my hometown of Canastota, N.Y. I was a boy listening to the radio when he won the welterweight championship in June 1955 against a very tough Tony DeMarco. We heard the fight on the radio. I was around 12 and tears welled up in my eyes - and that of my father - when Carmen took some blows that staggered him. "In the la panzia," my father yelled at the radio. "Hit him in the breadbasket, Carmenooch!"

When the ring announcer proclaimed to the rest of America and world, "From ...